With a couple of exceptions I will note later, Second life is pretty much dominated by Europe and North America. So I thought I’d finish with the rest of the world in one post.

Africa builds are pretty rare. I can point you to Casablanca Morocco pictured above as the best for virtual tourism. Other than that, I found a couple of role play sims, one based on Egypt, one on Kenya, and a few housing sims with a South Africa theme.

Casablanca is a mostly Islamic city, as you can tell from the architecture in the picture. As I toured the four continents, there are builds with symbols from all the great world religions.

Moving into Asia there is a fabulous build of a scale replica of the Jewish Temple, as it existed 2000 years ago in Jerusalem, it includes a self guided tour and a search for the “Lost Arc”.

Heading Northeast of Israel, and jumping over the Middle East, we come to a previously talked about build Astana, Kazakhstan.

The best India build I could find on the Bollywood server. There are some good examples of Indian art and architecture here.

Over the Himalayas, and on a mainland server, I found a rather large shopping mall based on the Forbidden City in Beijing China. It covers land on two different servers.

Next on the tour is Seoul Korea. As any MMORPG player will tell you, Koreans love online games, and can be found on almost all of them. It helps when nearly 90% of the population has broadband. So it should not come as a surprise that a large 10 server Korean build based on Seoul Korea is one of the most popular in Second Life.

Finally, off the coast of Asia is one of the most often imitated styles in SL, the Japanese style. I found lots of Japanese style neighborhoods all with uniform rental houses, not that interesting from a tourist perspective. It took a while to find an interesting Japanese build with some variety, and I found a 3 server Kyoto Japan build that fit the bill. The picture above of me in front of a Shinto Budda statue was taken there.

Back in a place where they speak English, or a close approximation there of (kidding), I visit the continent of Australia which like Africa is pretty slim pickings. Sydney, Australia is represented a few times, the best one being conveniently on the server of Australia. Here you will find scale models of the Opera House and the famous bridge, and hourly fireworks displays for no apparent reason, except fireworks are fun.

So between here and our final continent there is a lot of ocean, and thousands of Southern Pacific islands, reresented in Second Life by thousands of Southern Pacific island builds. Its kind of the default build in the game. Seen one you have seen them all.

So why not sail to South America in style in the largest ocean liner in Second Life, the SS Galaxy? If you have never been, its a fabulous ship, three servers big in all, and 7 decks high.

Final continent is South America, and in Second Life, that means Brazil, or more specifically Rio de Janeiro Brazil. After Europe, America and Korea, the Brazilians have made SL their home too. So much so that I have run into more Portuguese speakers than any other language outside of English.

A lot of that is due to a company called Mainland Brazil, which has partnered with Second Life and makes it easy for Brazilians to transition into the game, including selling Lindens for Brazilian reals.

Two builds, both dedicated to Rio de Janeiro, get fairly heavy traffic from the Portuguese speaking crowd. First is Brasil Rio server which has a beach theme. Second is Rio de Janeiro which has a popular in game dance club. Both feature mountain tram rides (above) and hang gliding (below)

Well that is it for the world tour as seen in Second Life. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Virtual Society Africa, Australia, Brazil, China, exploring, Historical, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, mirror worlds, Morocco, secondlife

Before we start the tour of Europe, there are a couple of important points that we American SL explorers often forget. First, there are more Eurpoean players in Second Life than American players. Second, a lot of the following builds were built by European players for European players.

In a way, it just makes things more realistic. Go to a European themed server and you are likely to meet Europeans there. Want to practice your German? Go to a German SL hang out and use voice speak. I believe that is one of the coolest things about SL that there is.

Anyways, lets start our tour of Europe by flying from New York to Dublin Ireland, recent host of the St Patricks celebration mentioned a few posts ago. Staying in the British Isles the next stop is a London England build on Knightsbridge server (above).

Across the channel is the famous Amsterdam, Netherlands build, I reported on earlier here, and neighboring Belgium is represented by an officially sponsored build of the city of Bruges, Belgium.

Paris is represented by a few builds in SL, but the only one I consider to be great is the Paris in 1900 build. This is not a role playing sim, but they ask if you can dress appropriately if possible. They have a life size Eiffel Tower 400 meters high (above), the cloud level in SL is 250 meters, hence the obscured view of the top. There is also a life size Arc de Triumphe, Champs Elysees, Moulin Rouge, and a difficult to get to Notre Dame Cathedral (the 5 server build has no flying allowed).

Heading to the south of France is a build based on Cannes. Cannes is famous for two things, the worlds largest film festival and topless beaches. This particular build focuses on the former, but since when I was visiting I was the only one there, I decided to indulge in the latter. This very nice build does not have much of a beach though.

Looking instead for a nice European beach elsewhere, I stumbled onto a beach in Marbella, Spain. Not a topless beach (its a PG server) but a fantastic two server build worth checking out.

Like France, Italy is another country heavily mirrored in Second Life. The above picture is from the official Tuscany build which has about 3 layers to it, one of which features Pisa. An even bigger (4 server) Italian build is based on the city of Milan. A couple of other nice Italian builds can be found on Centro Italia and Armidi servers, though these are primarily shopping builds so no famous landmarks. While still in the Mediterranean check out this two server Sicilian build.

North of Italy is Austria, and there is a small build of Vienna complete with buildings you can enter (above).

You can’t visit Europe without visiting Germany. I tried searching for Germany and came up with nothing interesting, but if you search Berlin I found a few competing builds, the best being New Berlin, which also has its own website http://berlinin3d.com/.

North of Germany is the Scandinavian countries, represented with a Wonderful Denmark build.

Finally, we finish Europe heading east to Moscow, Russia, with a very nice build of the Kremlin and Red Square.

While my focus has been on cool builds of real places, a couple of official builds should be mentioned. I previously noted that Sweden has a virtual embassy in Second Life. The country of Greece also has an official group of servers to promote itself.

The rest of the world will be coming soon.

Virtual Society Austria, Britain, Denmark, Europe, exploring, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, mirror worlds, Netherlands, Russia, secondlife, Spain

So I have done a few entries about builds based on real places. I really like these kinds of builds and thought I’d try tracking as many as I can find down and posting about the best ones. I found enough to do this in a few entries, so I’m breaking it down by continent, and I am starting with North America.

Far and away the coolest real life build in North America that I found is a brand new one based on Campeche Mexico at Visit Mexico 3. This is part of a three server build exploring the Yucatan Peninsula. The southern half is a quaint mexican village, the northern half is a scale build of a mayan temple complex (above).

The Visit Mexico build is sponsored by the Mexico Tourism Board, and includes quite a few things to see and do. Here’s me on a horse in front of Chichen Itza. While visiting these servers, turn on your audio. These servers have original music piping through.

Heading north to the United States, there are a few cool builds. The above pictured is New Orleans on the Big Easy server, where charity events are occasionally held. Bordering that is a server dedicated to Biloxi Mississippi.

Another town that is sponsoring their own cool two server build is Galveston Texas, a town built on an island in the Gulf of Mexico.

Leaving the Gulf, and heading to the Pacific ocean, there is a miniature San Diego California called Diegoland to check out. Also a nice build of Venice Beach, complete with roller skate paths, murals, and an ugly lifeguard tower, that is pretty much the staple all along the California coast.

Flying over most of the US we come to New York City, which has inspired a few nice builds. I previously mentined the incomplete Times Square build. Also worth checking out is Central Park (above), part of a three server build with a lifesize WTC and Statue of Liberty in the other two. The best New York City builld though is probably Washington Square Park, which like Times Square includes a subway station underground. Another really nice one is the NYC server build.

Finally, a trip through North America would not be complete without a visit to our neighbor to the north, Canada. Doing a search, led me to discover a very nice Toronto build called Canada Post – Maple Leaf on a mainland server.

Before ending this part, check out the Iowa server. Lots of straight roads and mostly empty, just like the real Iowa. There are some bits of Americana worth checking out though.

Virtual Society Canada, exploring, Mexico, mirror worlds, New Orleans, New York, North America, San Diego, secondlife, Toronto

So a few posts ago, I showed how Times Square is the most mirrored place in cyberspace. Thanks to generous funding from Toyota, the Toyota Scion is the most mirrored car in cyberspace.

Above is me with a There scion. They had a Club Scion in world for months before they released customizable cars.

Toyota was one of the first clients of Millions of Us a company in Second Life that builds corporate sims. There is a three server build called Scion City where you can borrow a scion or buy if you want to take it off the server.

But Toyota has managed to get into some of the 2D virtual worlds like Whyville and Gaia Online just to hedge their bets.

You would think that would be enough for Toyota, the biggest virtual world supporter behind Viacom, but they have taken the next logical step and are actually starting their own 3D Virtual world!!

Its called Toyota Metapolis and it is part of a japanese only virtual network called Meet Me which is currently in closed beta. Yes, the website is in japanese and I cant read a word of it. Here’s a google translated page you can try. There is a video you can download too.

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Here are a bunch of random “party” screenshots from my first two years of SL (if you want the last two years just look in the blog archive):

A wild and crazy pool party my friends threw, I’m the one in the round floaty.

The story of the circumstances of this event are interesting. Three years ago, Linden Labs needed to do a “stress test” on the servers to find out how well the system would scale up. They wanted to get 8,000 people in the game at the same time, and put out e-mails offering prizes for those that participated.

So we threw a big stress test party for the occasion. Incidentally, they only managed to get a little over 5,000 to participate. Seems ironic now when there are 40,000 to 60,000 on normally these days.

Attending my first ever in world screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

A group of friends showing off our “power moves” Actually we are playing with group pose balls.

Big live music event at the “Night Club at the End of the Universe”

Virtual Society anniversary, event, party, secondlife

In 3D virtual worlds we try to simulate the real world virtually. Here’s a guy trying to simulate virtual worlds in real life. The second part of this video is an interview with the maker, whose attitude is very similar to my own. Very entertaining idea.

Metaverse News avatars, reality, video

This month is my fourth anniversary of my avatar in Second Life. I thought I’d do a couple of looks back using screenshots. One of myself, one of the world as a whole. Here is me in game from 2004 to 2008.

2004 – Damn I am such a NOOB!! I was on a basic account and limited myself to what I could get for free or cheap. They actually gave out 50L per week with a basic account. This was when there were less than 100,000 basic accounts to begin with.

2005 – Still on a basic account, but started to accrue enough L$ to start uploading my own graphic files, like my own custom skin file, and buying early prim hair. I still hadn’t mastered the art of makeup yet. Living conditions consisted of whatever house I could break into when the owner was offline.

2006 – Finally splurged for premium account and bought some land. Did a little bit of land wheeling and dealing before ending up where I am today, for at least the last 2 and a half years. Got better at skin, makeup, and making my own clothing, and animations.

2007 – Yet another evolution of hair and skin. Took this picture for my website at Devils Moon. Notice the reflections in the wet looking ground. This is actually a prim trick of building a copy of the buildings under the ground.

2008 – The Windlight client makes for great screenshots. notice the water reflections and refractions, the improved atmosphere rendering. Skin hasn’t changed since 2007, but flexi prim hair has.

Wow what a radical change in four short years!!

Virtual Society anniversary, screenshot photography, secondlife

Above is a video demo of Times Square built in Multiverse which is now available as a demo of the Multiverse platform.

Its not the first time Times Square has been represented virtually. If you have Second life you can click here to go to times square, or if you have Google Earth you can click here.

There are also panoramic photo viewers of Times Square like this one or this one, or you can go to Google street view

Metaverse News mirror worlds, New York, video, virtual worlds